Label: Parlophone Records
Release date: November 18, 1985
Production: Alex Sadkin & Arcadia
Album length: 43.36 min
Genre: New Wave / Art Rock
Rating: 10/10
Arcadia was a side project formed in 1985 by three members of the New Romantic heroes Duran Duran – singer Simon Le Bon, keyboardist Nick Rhodes and drummer Roger Taylor. While Andy and John Taylor, the other two members of the classic Duran Duran lineup, were busy testing the waters in the supergroup Power Station, which mostly swore by hard-rocking and funky sounds, the aforementioned three buddies were determined to explore the wider horizons of New Romantic melody and give it a dash of something more experimental, with some art rock charm. In many ways, then, Arcadia was an upgrade of the traditional Duran Duran sound, which by no means suggests that once they started digging deeper into new musical territory, this slightly different direction became any less interesting to the wider crowds who otherwise swore by pop rock.
On most of the “So Red the Rose” tracks it’s obvious that the band members were heading into territory they wouldn’t have dared to touch under the Duran Duran name, since they could have risked a pretty serious commercial flop. Even though the album has a distinctly art rock charge, with a wide range of electropop, ambient, jazz and even world music elements, it went platinum and gave them four hit singles with “Election Day”, “The Promise”, “The Flame”, “El Diablo” and “Goodbye Is Forever”. The only Arcadia single that failed to break into the charts was “Say the Word”, which came out as part of the soundtrack to the film “Playing for Keeps”.
The album clearly benefits from the contributions of numerous superb and mostly legendary guests, such as guitarist/singer David Gilmour (Pink Floyd), singer/bassist Sting (ex-The Police), keyboardist Herbie Hancock (ex-Miles Davis), guitarist Carlos Alomar (best known for his work with David Bowie), singer Grace Jones, saxophonist Andy Mackay (Roxy Music) and bassist Mark Egan (best known for his work with the Pat Metheny Group). The latter shines with his sensitive fretless bass playing especially on “The Promise”, “El Diablo” and “Lady Ice”, the closing three tracks of the album. All of them are “to blame” for the album’s incredibly rich, full sound, since each brings their own signature musical influences to the New Romantic melodies.
Already the opening hit “Election Day”, the best-known track on the album, which still enjoys wide radio support today, is an amalgam of many different sonic spices added to the new wave romanticism that Simon, Nick and Roger used to wow audiences with in the eighties as members of Duran Duran. This is especially true of the sax parts courtesy of Andy Mackay, who bring a hefty dose of Roxy Music pomp to the song. The arrogant-sounding narration by the then-popular and provocative Grace Jones adds an even higher level of glamour. The chorus slips effortlessly into your ears in line with the golden-years Duran Duran tradition, while Rhodes’ wide palette of synth textures is key to conjuring up that New Romantic melody that won their music armies of listeners.
“Keep Me in the Dark” also flirts shamelessly with art rock elements, the kind that even a band like Japan wouldn’t be ashamed of, which is especially true of the experimenting with intricate electronic patterns that Le Bon’s slightly paranoid vocals are threaded through this time. “Goodbye Is Forever”, a notch more playful overall but just as distinctly melancholic in the chorus, is infused with funk and dance elements. Mighty ambient synth curtains flow nicely in the background, cranking up the extraordinary melodrama of this excellent track even further.
The mysterious “The Flame” is another example of new wave sophistication with dance elements, where a mighty chorus keeps breaking through to the foreground again and again, in an intelligent way, via sly percussion work. “Missing” is an enigmatic ballad with laid-back sax parts in the background and a kind of lull, if not a prelude, before the closing stretch of the album. It’s hard to believe, given such overall quality in the individual tracks, but all of this was merely a warm-up before the best song on the album.
After the short instrumental “Rose Arcana”, ruled by ambient-electronic sounds, the ultra-romantic masterpiece “The Promise” arrives on the back of an unbelievably tight and juicy fretless bass line, a first-rate example of art rock-meets-ambient perfection. This evergreen piece of art is so polished in every sonic respect that even a claim as bold as this one can’t be refuted: it’s simply the best track of their career. That would hold true even if it had been released under the Duran Duran name. Everything on it, from the first second to the last, is pure perfection, while the ambient balance between the central melody and the experimental touches is at such a top level that even after more than two decades it still stuns even the most demanding music connoisseurs. Up front is a grooving yet sensitive fretless bass line that ties together the sprawling ambient curtains and the crafty electronic patterns flowing melancholically in the background. It all peaks in the epic chorus, when Mr. Sting joins Le Bon in the backing vocal harmony. Add to that the weeping sound of Gilmour’s slide guitar, which, with the help of the sax, ramps up the stunning romance and melancholy with an unmistakably Celtic flavor. The end result is one of the best rock songs of all time, which sadly still remains criminally overlooked today. After this peak come two more excellent and totally unique tracks.
The first of them is the Latin-flavored hit “El Diablo”, where they toy with world music elements, best evidenced by the mischievous violin and the sweet sound of Andean pan flutes. Here too the members of Arcadia win you over with a seductive, hypnotic chorus planted through the Latin melody of acoustic guitar and Peruvian pipes. This is a fine example of innovation and one of the first cases of successfully merging pop rock and world music. The closing “Lady Ice”, like “The Promise”, clocks in at over seven minutes and is another of the album’s art rock peaks. A longer ambient intro built on the metallic-electronic sound of synthesizers eventually morphs into a melancholic, exceptionally fragile melody with an inconsolable chorus. The best way to describe this excellent hybrid of art rock and new wave is that it sounds like what you’d get if you locked Duran Duran, Japan and Roxy Music in the same room together.
“So Red the Rose” is a unique example of New Romantic polish and a thrilling upgrade of the usual Duran Duran vocabulary, where new wave and art rock harmoniously join hands, but sadly it’s a masterpiece all too often forgotten when the best albums of the eighties come up. Simon Le Bon once said on a special occasion that Arcadia was the most pompous project he had ever worked on, which was merely an expression of his lack of faith in his own abilities, proof of narrowed horizons and one of the main reasons they released only one album as Arcadia. It’s definitely the best album Duran Duran never made, and it deserves the attention of those who swear more by art rock than by new wave and pop rock. As for today’s pop rock bands drooling teenagers en masse over their albums, topping the charts and, in their ‘spare time’, putting out top-notch art rock albums that music connoisseurs of all generations would lick their lips over – well, that’s something you can only dream about.
Author: Peter “Dr. ProgRock” Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Election Day
2. Keep Me in the Dark
3. Goodbye Is Forever
4. The Flame
5. Missing
6. Rose Arcana
7. The Promise
8. El Diablo
9. Lady Ice
Lineup:
Simon Le Bon – vocals
Nick Rhodes – keyboards
Roger Taylor – drums
Guest musicians:
Sting – vocals on track 7
Grace Jones – narration on track 1
David Gilmour – guitar on track 7
Carlos Alomar – guitar
Herbie Hancock – keyboards on track 7
Andy Mackay – saxophone
Mark Egan – bass guitar
David Van Tieghem – percussion
Rafael DeJesus – percussion
Manu Katche – percussion
Steve Jordan – additional drums and percussion on track 9
Wendel Jr. – drum programming
Jean-Claude Dubois – harp
Masami Tsuchiya – violin
Pierre Defay – violin
